Obama's SOTU: a huge contradiction & a collapsed soufflé

[UPDATE: Don't-Say-I-Didn't-Warn-You Department: The "answer to everything" link below delivers an oddly apt simulation of Washington DC as experienced by the average voter.]

Peggy Noonan spots the contradiction:

The central fact of the speech was the contradiction at its heart. It repeatedly asserted that Washington is the answer to everything. At the same time it painted a picture of Washington as a sick and broken place.

With her speechwriter's eye, she also picks up on subtle-but-telling indications that Obama has given up on the health care bill:

Waxing boring on the virtues of the [health care] bill was a rhetorical way to obscure the fact that it is dead. . . . The bill will now get lost in the mists and disappear. It is a collapsed soufflé in an unused kitchen in the back of an empty house.

For what it's worth, a poll on the non-partisan Open Congress website currently shows 78% of participants opposing the Senate version of the healthcare reform bill.